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AMERICA AT WAR 

BY 

REV. WILLIAM B. AYERS 




A sermon delivered April 8th, 191 7 

at the Park and Downs Congregational Church 

Wollaston Park, Mass. 



AMERICA AT WAR 



J1510 
AS 

•A? 



The long moral struggle is over. The extremists 
have prevailed in Germany, while in America righteous- 
ness has become another name for wrath. All the just, 
righteous, and kindly endeavors of our government to main- 
tain the code of international rights and human safeguards 
have been made the object of scorn, and the instruments 
by which royal arrogance sought to fulfill its schemes. 

Our record is clean. We have leaned backward to 
maintain the cause of peace. 

In the pursuit of this cause we have been called 
cowards and selfish people. So did we yearn for peace, 
that the world mistook this longing for selfishness, and we 
ourselves began to doubt and grow a little discouraged and 
ashamed. 

It seemed as if perhaps we did not realize the full 
meaning in this crisis of the world, as if we neither rose 
to its full apprehension nor did our share. We seemed 
unable to adjust our lives to the tremendous condition 
abroad, or to compress our loose-jointed thoughts and our 
luxurious and voluptuous tastes into the compass in which 
a century reduced itself to months. 

We had grown so petty and partisan that the great 
struggle seemed to have no meaning for us, or if it did we 
had become indifferent to its most vital and lasting issues. 
We could not unite upon a single great enterprise. 

But America has awakened and now she is finding her 
soul. We have been trying to ward off this moment for 
a long time. At last it has come and our duty is clear. 
The thought and purpose of our nation should have full, 
immediate expression, and unqualified support. All par- 
'•tisanship should disappear, all selfish interests should be 
laid aside, and the unity of the nation should be proved 
by our patriotic allegiance to duty, our devoted loyalty to 
any plan marked by the hand of God, and our united effort 
to make effective our Christian ideals. 

In my lecture on "The Great War," October, 1914, 
I made the statement that America would eventually be 
drawn into the conflict. This, without regard to the poli- 

Note : So many requests have come for copies of this address that it was 
determined, by members of the church, to have the sermon printed. 

All rights reserved 
MAY 2': mj 



tical complexion of our government or the personality of 
our President. The drift was all that way and we could 
not help ourselves. America could not be true to the ideals 
which for over a century had been hers, and not take part 
in a struggle that, when cleared of its misapprehensions, 
became a vast tug-of-war between tyranny and democracy. 
We could not see democracy destroyed. Against the com- 
mon danger all democracy must unite. 

To the student of history and of current events it 
seemed impossible for the freest people in the world, and 
those who most loved liberty and the things which belong 
to liberty, to keep their hearts and hands out of a struggle 
in which autocracy and tyranny sought to wrest the liber- 
ties from the free people of other continents. 

Germany's manner of entering the war proved to some 
of us that we could not remain out of it. 

Had Germany refrained from an attack on France, 
had she massed her troops upon her own frontier, and 
waited upon her own land to receive the full force of the 
French attack, our people might have had much sympathy 
for the German cause. 

If then Germany had inflicted defeat on the French, 
and invaded the Frenchmen's territory without violating 
the neutrality of Belgium, England and America would 
most likely never have joined in the war. The blunders 
of Germany have all been blunders of judgment concerning 
high human sentiment. She has failed to reckon with the 
moral convictions of other people. Her judgments have 
all been based upon material considerations and material 
rewards. 

In no way is the national German character more com- 
pletely revealed than in this failure to assign to other 
nations any motive for heroic activity higher than that of 
selfish ambition and criminal greed. 

"Will England join in the war against us?" inquired 
her generals. "No," answered her diplomats, "because it 
is not in her interest to do so. She has other ambitions 
to engage her and other fields of profitable enterprise to 
keep her busy." 

The German Ambassador to England so completely 
misread the British mind that up to the very last he 
informed his government that Great Britain would not 
join in the war. 



The hatred of the Germans for England is based upon 
the fact that Britain turned the tide against her, and en- 
tered the war when the Germans, by their peculiar reason- 
ing, could see no object in her entrance and therefore did 
not expect her as an opponent. They will probably hate 
us for like reasons. 

It was the same with the Belgians. The Germans 
were amazed at the opposition of that heroic people. "Why 
should they object to our invasion of their land?" inquired 
the Teutonic statesmen. "We will pay them back." 

The Germans had gone stupid and mad with mate- 
rialism. 

They did not realize that sentiment is not dead in 
the world and that ideals yet remain. 

It was in the period between 1850 and 1880 that the 
materialistic philosophy had its rise and development in 
the German mind. 

It is logical that out of this should grow the doctrine 
of force and selfishness. Brutality is but a step beyond 
materialism. In fact the Bismarck method and scheme 
could not be imposed save on a nation philosophically pre- 
pared to receive it. 

We think our quarrel is with the German government 
alone. But the government cannot be detached from the 
people. We will find before we are done that the vast 
majority of the German people stand solidly back of their 
government, not only in the conduct but the conception 
of the war, and of the German mission to determine the 
destiny of the world. 

Some of her representative thinkers long busied them- 
selves trying to explain away the redemptive mission and 
the loving nature of Jesus Christ. The theory of mercy 
Was beyond them and they were incapable of compre- 
hending the Sacrificial Nature of The Divine. 

Before this war was dreamed of German scholars made 
the same assault upon the person of Christ that they have 
made upon Belgium and northern France. 

With terrible ruthlessness and idiotic cruelty they 
have laid waste that fairest land, destroying its sanctuaries 
and its homes, carrying away into bondage, and worse than 
bondage, its able-bodied men and fair-bodied women. This 
is a logical outcome of the rash and meaningless assault 
they have made on Christ. 



One by one, they have sought to take away from him 
his merciful meanings, and his divine functions, until they 
have left him spiritually naked, stumbling under the bur- 
den of a meaningless cross. If the German thinkers would 
denude God, they would not hesitate to rob and destroy 
man. 

The mind that thought itself equal to the task of 
revising the Nature of the Divine would certainly not quail 
before the task of altering the map of the world. 

It was indeed but a logical and a natural step to go 
from the Divine revision to the earthly. 

If a people are wise enough to uncover God they must, 
of all people, be those best gifted for the business of man- 
aging this world. The dream of world dominance, in the 
German mind, has furnished a powerful incentive to multi- 
form activities. Societies have been formed, fostered by 
the government, for the creation of other societies all over 
the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere, whose 
business it would be to make the German language a re- 
quirement in the public high schools. It has been a boast, 
among Germans, that the German language would become, 
in time, the speech of America. Two days before our 
declaration of war, a group of Germans sat in a Boston 
audience, and whispered in their mother tongue: "The flag 
of the Fatherland will yet fly over the golden dome of the 
State House." 

It is a race gone insane with conceit, having lost all 
true sense of proportion. This has been a fatal flaw in the 
German temperament. It has revealed itself in the strat- 
egy of the war. The Germans, being materialistic them- 
selves, assumed that the Belgians and the British were 
likewise, and would be guided by selfish motives alone. 
It never occurred to them that the English temperament 
would not allow England to stand supinely by and consent 
to the destruction of her little neighbor to the East. The 
moment Belgium was invaded England's declaration of war 
was inevitable. That was a fatal mistake for the German 
cause. But Germany did not realize the seriousness of 
this blunder, because she had lost her sense of moral values 
and had come to that place, of which the Bible speaks, 
where wrong looks right. 

Germany has been wonderful in her mechanism of war. 
As a machine, her army has been without a peer in his- 



6 

tory, and the military strategy she had devised has, on the 
whole, been sound. 

The blunders she has made have been the blunders of 
moral reasoning. Every mad foolish thing she has done 
has been the result of moral blindness undermining her 
strategy and making her mechanical skill of no avail. 

She has multiplied her enemies by her unmorality in 
war. 

The Anglo-Saxon is distinguished by the quality of 
fairness. 

From boyhood we are taught to fight fairly and cleanly 
and to remember, even in our wrath, the rules of the game. 

There have been no rules in this game of slaughter 
that Germany has waged. 

We cannot join our fortunes to such a people whose 
mental processes are abhorrent to ours. 

From the very beginning of the war, Germany has 
steadily maintained a course of conduct which has alienated 
our sympathies more and more, and which could not pos- 
sibly continue without making war between us inevitable. 
Such acts as the invasion and wasting of the land of the 
Belgians, one of the garden spots of the earth, the soil 
of which has been so often fertilized by the blood of heroes. 

Such an act was the burning of the university city of 
Louvain. 

This was abhorrent to an age revering learning and 
holding in high esteem the designs of beauty and utility of 
cultured minds. 

Next, the deliberate destruction of the temple of 
Rheims, that which is the high dream of man, frozen into 
forms of architecture. Rheims has been one of the pilgrim 
spots of the world. It stood for the religious aspirations 
of man, and seemed to condense in its own exquisite form 
all those conceptions of beauty which man's high instincts 
have been able to incorporate into stone. 

Then came that thing so repugnant to us — a thing that 
we could not do, — indeed would slay our own soldiers for 
doing; a thing not credited to civilized peoples, the shoot- 
ing of Edith Cavelle- as a spy. We began to wonder what 
kind of creatures these Germans could be. 

Then they deliberately bragged to the world that they 
were to sink the most majestic vessel that plied the seas, 
a ship that bore, as its armament, not batteries of guns, 



but women and children and other peaceable citizens, going 
inoffensively about their own duties. 

The unbelievable occurred. The Lusitania was sent to 
the bottom by a blow struck in the dark, a dastardly deed 
done secretly. We knew then that the first blow had been 
struck at us. Not only at our liberties but at our lives. 

We knew then what was bound to follow, other blows 
would come. Our inactivity, based on Christian conceptions, 
would be termed cowardly submission, and the full torrent 
of insane scheming would be turned against us. 

Then followed the massacre of the Armenians. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of them driven onto the desert to starve, 
their women and girls carted away to be ravished, ruined 
and devoured, by the imbecile passions of the swarthy 
Turk. We knew that a word from Germany would end 
this, and we were amazed that such a word was not forth- 
coming. We could not understand how Germany could 
allow such a thing. But now we understand fully. Ger- 
many had turned her back upon Western civilization. She 
had joined herself to the East as against the West, to the 
heathen world as against the Christian, to the Turk as 
against the white ; her Emperor pretending to be a Moham- 
medan, and her statesmen becoming the champions of the 
faith. While destroying Belgium and making slaves of her 
people, while bombarding from the skies the homes of 
women and the cradles of children, and sinking passenger 
ships without warning, Germany has been aiding Turkey 
with military forces while Turkey massacred a million 
Armenian Christians. Our Lord was constantly resorting 
to measures of protection for his disciples, and it would 
seem to be one of the duties of Christianity to protect and 
defend the citizens of the Kingdom. 

We know now why the German mind consented to the 
ravishing of the Armenians. Not only had she renounced 
the humanitarian ideals of Western Civilization, but she 
had become saturated with the same consuming poison, 
for she did in France and Belgium what she allowed Turkey 
to do in Armenia. The German soldiers have sat at the 
feet of the Turks and learned; and well they have learned 
their lesson. Now the Germans are carting away the beau- 
tiful girls of France, and the fair maidens of Belgium, to 
what dastardly purpose we dare not think. Their fathers 
and mothers they have separated, and driven into the 



8 

Empire to slave in the mills and the fields. You can fancy 
your mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in this pre- 
dicament and then say whether you believe we should not 
wage war against that sort of thing. 

We have not mentioned the clouds of poison gas and 
flaming oil introduced by the Teuton to become a common- 
place of war. 

Then the ships that began to go down became multi- 
tude, not the vessels of war but the floating arks of peace ; 
the Red Cross vessels, ships bearing the sick and wounded 
with the word "hospital " painted large on their sides, and 
the sign of mercy on the stack and flying from every mast- 
head. Steamers were sunk laden with food for the starving 
people of Belgium, gathered by generous hands and con- 
secrated by pious hearts. These followed the bleeding 
pathway that leads to the ocean's depths. 

Unarmed cities by the seaside had long been targets 
of Teutonic wrath. From the seas and from the skies 
blind hate rained destruction upon them, to no apparent 
purpose of war only the love of killing, women and children, 
resting in innocent and unsuspecting slumbers, mangled in 
their sleep. 

Our agents in Belgium, messengers of mercy and 
bearers of love to stricken people, were treated so meanly 
that they must needs withdraw. 

Then, in spite of promises and formal agreements to 
the contrary, the ruthless and terrible submarine warfare 
was resumed and we knew that our day of reckoning had 
come. 

The highways of the world Germany sought to make 
dangerous and deadly for all. The arteries of the world's 
trade she sought to cut, by stealth and under-the-sea 
methods which could not be supervised, restrained or con- 
trolled, or brought under the rules of peace or war. Our 
ships began to go to the bottom in common with those of 
other neutrals. American lives, whether women or men, 
were snatched and snuffed like rats in a plagued city. 

Our nation became menaced from within as well as 
from without. Bomb outrages multiplied. The country 
was beset by spies. The liberties we extended were shame- 
lessly abused. Our hospitality was violated without con- 
science. 

Then it was found that German statecraft had con- 



spired, in the very hour of its most friendly assertions, its 
loudest declarations of esteem, to foment strife and revolu- 
tion within our land and assault upon our nation from 
Mexico and Japan. Indeed, German diplomacy had con- 
spired the dismemberment of our nation. 

If there is any man who, in the face of these facts, 
will say that to go to war against this monster of iniquity 
is a wicked and reproachful thing, he himself has lost the 
distinctions of conscience and the sense of sacred right. 
Could I gather a dozen sons about me I would feel that I 
could dedicate them to no higher duty that that of redeem- 
ing the world from the clutches of this mad man among the 
nations. If, in this service for the world, every one of them 
should die I would feel that they had died gloriously to 
make high and lasting contribution to the world's good. 

America could not do other than she has. 

We would be untrue to all that we have been and have 
taught as a nation by any other course. 

We have been considered as the people of all others 
most ready to sacrifice ourselves for those whom nobody 
else thought worthy of aid. The impoverished and op- 
pressed and caste-bound peoples of the world have, for 
a century, looked upon America as the place of hope and 
friendliness and emancipation. 

We would deal treacherously with our ideals if we 
did not reach a strong arm across the seas to rescue Europe 
from the embrace of this maniac. 

We have been the rescuer of stricken peoples before. 
We have given our best life to save. 

We have been trusted and beloved, because we have 
been willing to suffer and bleed and die for the privilege 
of giving others a chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. 

We have believed in government by the people; that 
government is the servant of the people and not their 
master and tyrant. 

We have stood for the salvation of the people from 
the clutches of those who would cheat and exploit them for 
personal greed and ambition. On the whole, we have prac- 
ticed this, faultily always, stumblingly and stupidly often, 
many times with corruption in local means of government, 
yet having a marvellous power of adjustment and self cor- 
rection. 



10 

Our general effort has been toward justice. Our faults 
have been those arising from too much liberty; liberty 
abused or held in light esteem. 

It was a long time before the issues of this war became 
clear to the mind of the Western Hemisphere, but they are 
clarified now, for the alignment is very distinct. On the 
one side are the democratic governments, on the other the 
autocratic forms. 

Among the peoples engaged, the war has been waged 
with these two distinctive ideals in control. 

One group has waged a dastardly, cruel, tyrant war- 
fare, not considerate of any rights or liberties, or of the 
humanities, and acknowledging no law save that of its 
own blind greed, and the cowardly fear that passed under 
the name of military necessity, — such was the autocratic 
form of war. 

The Democracies have, on the whole, fought fairly. 
They have fought with a minimum of cruelty and with the 
humanities ever in mind. So far as human life is concerned 
they have conducted themselves according to the rules of 
the game. 

We know now that the future of this world will be 
determined by the kind of foe that wins the war. 

We know that if cruel and greedy autocracy wins, the 
world will be veiled in a web of deceit, and scheming, dam- 
aging plots will prevail and peace-destroying conspiracies. 

The death knell of democracy will be heard if autocracy 
wins, and the purpose of democracy will be so weakened 
and paralyzed and discouraged as to render it unequal to 
the task of reconstruction and self-perpetuation. In fact 
it is the aim of autocracy to destroy popular government. 

The war was hatched in the brain of an autocratic 
clique. 

Such a clique and such a power would be impossible in 
a free governing nation. 

Kaiserism knows that, if the democratic idea continues 
to spread, kaiserism will be destroyed ; therefore the purpose 
to discourage the democratic idea and to render impotent 
and sterile the growing strength of popular rights and 
popular representation. 

Against such a scheme free America cannot help but 
align herself. Willing and perpetual self-sacrifice is the 
cost of keeping the spirit of liberty alive in the world. 



11 

The denuded forests of France and the poisoned wells of 
water give mute testimony to the kind of world we could 
expect under the dominance of the Teutonic idea. 

At first the Germans did not think that we would come 
in, because they did not credit us with sentiment either. We 
were a greedy people, eager to snatch what we could from 
the flames of the world's destruction; a race of money 
sharks, not at all eager to sacrifice our ease and luxury 
and life for the things of honor and justice. 

Oh, we could be counted safe while autocracy made a 
meal of the heart and soul of the world. 

Then the fortunes of war shifted. Autocracy saw that 
it was not going to win. Its colonies were snatched away 
and the power over the future of Europe seemed slipping 
from its grasp. 

Something must be done to save the face of autocracy 
and to re-establish its waning prestige. 

When the Russian Czar was dethroned Kaiserism 
saw the hand-writing upon the wall. Reforms were im- 
mediately promised: the establishment of wider franchise 
and more liberal laws. But the thought of the people must 
be kept engaged, that they might have little time to pon- 
der their own condition or launch any system of their own 
devising. 

What better for this purpose than a new war, — with a 
great, new, powerful enemy. 

German diplomacy is also aware of our repugnance for 
foreign alliances. This we have inherited from the fathers 
of our country. 

Why not engage America at war, and gamble on this 
repugnance, to keep America from making any alliance 
with France and Great Britain as to the conduct and ter- 
mination of the war. 

This will leave America engaged at war with Ger- 
many after she has accepted the terms of the allies, and 
Germany's European enemies have laid down their arms. 

Defeated in Europe, having lost her colonies and able 
to extract no indemnity from her foes, but rather com- 
pelled to bear the cost to herself, and repay the damage 
to her enemies, Germany will be bankrupt, and her people 
will most likely rise in denunciation against their rulers, 
and snatch the sceptre fram their hands. Therefore, as 
a measure of self-preservation on the part of the Hohen- 



12 

zollerns, some provision must be made to recover the equi- 
valent of what has been lost. Where could this be done 
more easily than in the Western Hemisphere? The vast 
Central and South American Continent is a mine, the sur- 
face of which has hardly been scratched. The United 
States, the richest country in the world, and in many ways 
the weakest, an unprotected and unprepared storehouse of 
the world's treasure. 

After the Allies have ceased to fight, Germany will be 
left at war with America; Germany with five million vet- 
eran soldiers and a navy greater than that of America, and 
with flocks of submarines as well. 

Could not the American navy be engaged at one point 
while an army was landed at another; at that moment a 
general up-rising of loyal Germans within the country, aid 
from the Mexicans perhaps, the coast cities taken from the 
rear or the sea, and a vast tribute exacted, including Alaska 
and Panama and the Island possessions? This would leave 
America humiliated and crushed and unable to bar Kaiser- 
ism from a free hand in South America. 

It is a foolish dream, you say? Yes, the whole war 
was a foolish dream three short years ago. 

The whole vast enterprise was pronounced by scholars 
and statesmen improbable and absurd. The most impos- 
sible things have become recorded facts. 

Our people and our legislators should be keenly alive 
to this condition. They should not be deluded with the 
idea of our isolation so that they will decline to make 
treaties laying down the limits of the war, our purposes 
and goals, and agreeing with France and England not to 
make a separate peace. 

Our future security requires that America and France 
and England now pool their forces, together with the new 
Republic of Russia, whose recent assertion of popular rights 
has made possible the exalted statement of our President, 
that no one of them be left to battle for its existence after 
the others have laid down their arms. 

We cannot fight Germany and Austria, Bulgaria and 
Turkey alone, with possibly Mexico in the bargain, for the 
rumblings are already heard in the land to the south of 
us. 

The over-cautious and narrow-visioned people and 
politicians must not be allowed to bind and gag the nation 



13 

and leave her helpless against the international assassin. 

It seems strange that laymen could foretell two years 
ago that this nation would be drawn into the war, while 
governmental circles scoffed at the idea. 

Some of us will never forget how our fears were ridi- 
culed, and how eagerly we awaited some clear, high enuncia- 
tion of principle. 

We were called militarists because we foresaw dark 
events ahead and called upon the nation to prepare itself 
for them. 

We will never cease to regret that long year in which 
so little was done to make the nation ready for the trial 
that seemed inevitable. But all that is in the past. We 
have crawled into war hardly buckling on our armor as we 
did so. 

We have a great naval program but it will be some 
years before we can finish and utilize all the vessels. 

We have a fine army program, and multitudes of will- 
ing and enthusiastic men, but a year hardly suffices for the 
creation of a vast modern army. 

What we lack in arms and vessels, airships, submarines 
and munitions must be made up by clear-visioned, sharp- 
witted diplomacy. 

We must, as the first measure of this diplomacy, 
make impotent Germany's greedy scheme. We must not 
leave ourselves to fight her alone, but make an immediate 
treaty with the free governments of France and Russia and 
England, agreeing that none of us will make separate peace, 
but that all will safeguard the interests of each, and each of 
all. Any early proffers of peace coming to us from Ger- 
many will be designed to deceive us and delay the formula- 
tion of such a treaty. We must not be misled by them. 

We should immediately dispatch a unit of soldiers to 
France and Belgium, that our flag may fly over the trenches, 
that the hearts of liberating soldiers be cheered by its pres- 
ence, and the world see that we are not a race of cowards 
willing to venture food and treasure and everything but 
ourselves. We must be willing to receive our baptism and 
bear our part of the common burden in the forefront of the 
battle's lines. 

Our entrance into the war needs no justification. If 
righteousness is right then our entry into this kind of 
war cannot be called a sin. In fact it is the only thing that 



14 

we as a Christian nation could possibly do. If we have 
sinned it is in not going in sooner. 

The genius of Christianity is self-sacrifice. The Chris- 
tian man will venture his life to stop and dispose of the mad 
dog that rushes through the streets snapping at children 
and spreading the virus of his deadly disease. 

The Christian man will risk his life and give his life 
to disarm and subdue the maniac who strikes and slays 
those within reach of his madness. 

The Christian man will throw his dignity to the breezes 
and compel the drunkard to silence his oaths and cease his 
violence in the presence of women. The Christian man 
will punish the seducer of children and restrain him against 
the repetition of his crime. We have some Christian duties 
for which we need not apologize. Indeed we must apolo- 
gize in shame if we do them not. 

Talk about the wickedness of force. Christianity itself 
is a force. There is nothing more forceful than a quick 
and active remedy. It takes action and power to eliminate 
disease. 

The body of man suffers violence when it is being 
purged of fever and plague. Christ said that his kingdom 
would set brothers and children and parents at variance, 
one with the other. His kingdom, as a reformative element, 
was a force that worked violently and stirred evil to retal- 
iation. Speech is a force. The pen is a force. And pen 
and tongue have made more wounds than swords. Surgery 
is a force that cuts and destroys to a blessed purpose of 
healing and salvation. Between the sword and the sermon 
is only a matter of degree, and one can be made as redemp- 
tive as the other. 

Between Germany at war and America at war is all 
the moral difference in the world. She is fighting to destroy 
and to grab; we are fighting to save and to free. Our 
action needs no other justification. We are willing to lay 
down our best life that the principles and ideals for which 
we have fought before shall not perish from the earth. In 
the light of this ideal, victory will be ours if we are brave 
and wise and farseeing. God will give us of His strength, 
for it is true of nations, as of individuals, that to him that 
hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be 
taken away even that which he hath. If Germany had any 



15 

real faith she could not do what she has done. She gave 
up the things of the soul, and now the things of material 
achievement must be taken away. 

With the solemn prayers of Good Friday upon our lips 
we have taken up the burden of war on the anniversary 
of our Saviour's Crucifixion. What is to be the outcome 
of our lenten sacrifice only the years can reveal. It must 
be faced as a stern, sober, terrible task. It is no time for 
wild passion, unreasoning hate or brainless excitement. 
Let not the flame of senseless wrath consume us. Let no 
impulse of blind consuming revenge drive us to blushing 
extremities. 

Let no greedy aspirations take hold upon the national 
life to lead us from the paths of spiritual rectitude. There 
must be for us no thought of conquest, no prizes save those 
goals of the spirit which we seek to assert, to liberate and 
redeem. We are a liberal nation, now called to subdue and 
arrest an aggressive imperialistic one. And it is a just 
summons. Surely the advance of democracy is compatible 
with the spiritual enterprise of the Christian Kingdom. 
And a league of democracies bound together by the tie of 
a just co-operation will make fertile soil for the Christian 
gospel. As time passes and our activities become more 
furious, we must not permit ourselves to forget the con- 
victions with which we began and the goal we first had in 
mind. Our righteous purposes must be kept clearly and 
constantly before us, or we shall become entangled in a 
passion that is blind and furious and self-destroying. It 
devolves upon us in a very peculiar sense to keep alive the 
kindly spirit and those necessary spiritual elements upon 
which only a just and lasting peace can be established. 
We seek to proclaim the doctrine of human rights and world 
security — then let our national and personal conduct be such 
that we shall be able to impose upon the world at the end 
of the war a more liberal sprinkling of this doctrine than 
it ever knew before. We are not fighting to subdue a single 
enemy but to keep alive a principle and to do what we can 
to make it universal. 

If we crush our enemy, but lose sight of our ideal, we 
are defeated and the world is infinitely worse off than if 
we had never gone into the fray. We are fighting for the 
security of nations against imperial ambitions and the mad- 
ness of imperial pride. 



16 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



018 465 799 5 



We have indeed entered the war with deep and genuine 
reluctance. Even those of us who in the past have crit- 
icized our president's extremely pacifistic attitude will be 
glad now that he was for so long a time doggedly opposed 
to war. With so much division in the country, so much 
irresolution, his method has, on the whole, proved sounder 
than we thought. It has bound the nation together so 
that we present a fairly solid front to the issue. We are 
not unmindful of the suffering of Teutonic peoples, and 
even in our hostility we shall not cease to be sorry for them 
and compassionate toward them. 

Should we allow our motives to degenerate into a blind 
racial hatred for those people who are now our enemies 
then our own nation will become hopelessly divided and a 
democracy that is humanitarian will become a conglomerate 
that is devilish. We go into battle for certain high humani- 
tarian conceptions. They must be maintained. In the 
minds of all people our participation must be kept clearly 
associated with the ideals of international security and the 
popular well-being. The nations of the world need purging. 
America with all the rest. If governments had planned for 
the general welfare, the world would not now be in tears, 
and the scientific knowledge and technical skill of mankind 
would not now be dedicated to humanity's destruction. Had 
the nations of the world been just, the high loyalty of man- 
hood and its enthusiastic self-dedication would all be de- 
voted to the development of human life rather than its un- 
doing. Had nations been wise and kind in their domestic 
laws, the maddest tragedy this side of Calvary would not 
today be in process of enactment, and the high attainments, 
noble impulses and divine gifts of men would now be work- 
ing together for the redemption of mankind and for the 
fulfilment of his divine function. We have much that is 
sordid and selfish of which we must be purged. Patriotism 
must become another name for prayer. By keeping in mind 
the Christian ideals, even as we fight to make fighting less 
probable in the future, we should give to those ideals a 
more universal acknowledgment and shall be able to carry 
into the counsels of the nations the spirit of the cross. 



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